027. How to Increase Visibility to Grow Sales

Welcome. I am marketing expert and business coach Melissa Kellogg Lueck. And this is the Doing Business Like a Woman podcast, where we are exploring and teaching you how women are reinventing the way business is done and money is made to help you create greater impact and financial freedom one business at a time. Well, hello. Hello, my friends. How are you? I hope you're having a fabulous day wherever and whenever you're listening to this. Where I am, it is Friday afternoon, and I'm really thankful it's Friday. It's been windy at my house, like, all week long, and I really haven't spent much time outside. I haven't done much walking or exercising. And so I'm really looking forward to a weekend of nice weather, getting outside and going for some walks with my dog, that sort of thing. So, anyway, what I wanted to talk with you about today is continuing the conversation from episode 25, which was how to own your value and why it's critical to your growth. So if you haven't listened to the episode, I would go back and listen to that and then come right back here because this is going to be the kind of the next step following that episode. And what we talked about in that episode is really about understanding and owning up to the immense value that you possess, not just as your innate value as a human, but the value you bring to the marketplace and that the world needs what you have to offer, and really owning up to that and connecting with that. And then the natural outgrowth of that is wanting to become more visible, to get your message out there, to really spreading your impact. And you're making your mission happen, right? And as a business, making money and signing clients and letting people know how you can help them. And so that's what we're going to talk about today is increasing your visibility to grow sales. And so first thing I want to do is talk about marketing, because really, you know, increasing your visibility is marketing and really talking about thinking differently about marketing and becoming more visible. What I find most often when I talk to people is that they know marketing is necessary, but they don't necessarily love it, or they don't feel good about it or don't feel like they're good at it. They feel inadequate, like they're not doing enough, not doing it right, not reaching enough people. Nobody's listening to me, you know, all that sort of thing. And that's completely normal. We all feel that way and think that way at certain times. Right. And sometimes all the time. And that's fine. But what I want to want you to understand and really hear me here is that marketing is not the latest trend or the latest hack or the latest fad. Marketing is not TikTok or YouTube videos or Instagram or your Instagram grid or having beautiful branding photos and branding colors and fonts and all that stuff. Those are all simply tools. So if you think of a box of tool, a toolbox full of tools, if you have a toolbox full of screwdrivers, some are Phillips and some are flathead screwdrivers, they're all tools and they all will unscrew or screw in a screw, right? They all work. They all work similarly. But you get to choose which tools, which screwdriver you want to use. Do you want to use the one with the, you know, soft handle or the one with the hard plastic handle or the one that's, you know, shiny silver? I don't know. I have like one screwdriver. Well, my husband has a lot of them. But anyway, we won't go down that road. But do you get what I'm saying? Like, all these different tactics are simply tools and they all work. But really what marketing is and what getting visible is, is creating connections with other humans. Even if you're selling B2B, you will be selling to humans. So it's all about creating connection and relationships with other humans. And so if you can put down all of the feelings and thoughts of inadequacy around the tools and just think about creating relationships and connection with other humans, that's what marketing is. And becoming more visible is just putting yourself in the place where you have the opportunity to connect with more humans. And so that can be online, can be in person, there's all kinds of different ways, right? And so we're going to talk about some of that, but I wanted to just help you to really change your thinking around marketing. And maybe if you're thinking about it just in a way as one human, you as one human connecting with another human, that's all marketing has to be. It just demystifies it, simplifies it and takes all the tech confusion out of it. Takes all the confusion, right? Because it's basically like, how do you want to connect with other humans and just go and do that, right? So that's what marketing is. And so that's one part of being visible is simplifying it and demystifying it that way. The second part of increasing your visibility is making it safe for yourself to be visible. A lot of times we don't feel safe being being visible. We don't want to be on social media. We don't want to speak in front of our networking group or, you know, we don't want to put ourselves out there. And so ask yourself if that's the case. And that's the case. You know, we all go through that. That's the case for all of us in one way or another, right? And we feel safe in different circumstances and not others. And so just examine and ask yourself if that's the case. If you don't feel safe putting yourself out there on social media, guess what? You don't have to. I know people, including myself, that have built really, really successful businesses without being on social media. And yes, I am on social media, right? I am now. But when I first started my business, there wasn't social media. So. And I'm sure you know, people that have created businesses without being on social media too. So goes back to the tool. It's just a tool, right? If you don't want to use that screwdriver, you don't have to. You can use another one. There's a lot in the drawer. Think about how you can make yourself feel safe. And where do you feel safe if you're not feeling safe? Why? What is it about that venue or that opportunity that you don't feel safe with? A lot of times we don't feel safe because we feel unworthy or we feel inadequate, or we feel like there's something wrong with our appearance. We don't like the way we look, or we don't like the way our voice sounds, or just have some awareness around that and ask yourself, how could I feel safe in this instance? Maybe it just comes down to deciding that you're good enough and you have something to offer and you're going to love yourself. I think that's really what it comes down to for me and is knowing that I create my own safety so I don't have to wait for some circumstance to create safety. I get to decide when and where I feel safe. Right? And a lot of that has to do with radical self support and self acceptance and trust and love for ourselves and saying, even if I get on this podcast or on this Facebook Live or whatever, and I screw up and I stumble, it's okay, I'm okay with that. I still love myself. I'm okay with my imperfections. And you can create your own safety for yourself in that way in a lot of instances. Next, I want you to really think about why you want to be visible and really connect to the mission that you're on. What Is the reason that you want to spread the message that you want to spread that. Why do you want to offer the service and serve the people the way you want to serve the people and connect back with that mission and really internalize that and allow that to create a shift in your body, in the way that you're feeling, a shift in your energy, right? And once you connect and really think about those people that you want to serve and the change that you want to create, the solution that you want to offer, the problem you want to solve and how you want to solve it, and just let that energy just flow through you and energize you. And that's really where we want to be and where we want to be marketing from that place, right? And so then from that place we can start thinking about what are the marketing strategies or the actions that we want to be taking. And so what I like to teach on about marketing strategy is that you have your close circle and your wide circle, right? So I think of the close circle and as our network of friends and family and connections that we have in our community, our neighbors, whatever, whether that's in person or on social media and all of the different circles that we move in, kids, school or sports or whatever, you have a lot of connections, a lot of people that are already around you, that are already connected to you. And when you think about that and really tabulate that, which is kind of fun sometimes, then think about each one of those people is connected to other people, right? So if you go and you tabulate like how many, you know, connections you have on LinkedIn and followers you have on Instagram and people on your email list and friends on Facebook or. And then how many people are in your personal, you know, address book or that sounds very old fashioned address book, but you're like your contacts on your phone, right? If you add all that up and then think about all those people have connections, right? So really your orbit is probably 10 times what you think it is. And that's your closed circle. And all of these folks will work with you because they know you, like you and trust you. They have that personal connection with you already. And so you want to make sure that you are visible to them and nurturing those relationships and letting them know what you do, how you serve people so that if they need what you have to offer, they will hire you. Or if they hear of someone or one of their connections needs what you have to offer, they will refer you. And we can do this in a very just. It's just about being present and showing up and talking about what's important to you. If someone asks you, how's your day or how's your week going or what have you been up to lately? You don't have to just be like, oh, nothing. You know, you can be like, oh, my gosh, I'm so excited. I just helped. You know, I just heard from my clients this week, and they're, like, getting these amazing results, and it's just been such a great week. And, you know, you can allow that excitement and that, you know, mission that you're on to really shine through. And so. So how we do this, okay, getting myself ahead of myself in my notes, but how do we do this? So we're out just meeting people in person or online and having conversations and creating relationships and offering to help when you get the opportunity, right? This is keeping in touch, whether it's on social media or using email. If you have an email list and you're sending out a regular email, it can be phone calls to people or messaging them. Whatever works for you. But it's just remaining in contact and connecting with your close circle of contacts, of people. Right. People in your orbit. And what I often find is, and I've been definitely guilty of this myself, is we often think that there are not enough people around us or that the people that are around us aren't good enough or aren't willing to hire us or buy what we have to offer. And it's absolutely not true. So when we think that our current network around us is not enough, then we totally ignore them. We're not present with them, we don't acknowledge them, and we overlook them. And we're actually. And we go out and we're trying to hoard contacts from all these other places rushing around, when actually all the business that we need, all the clients that we need are already around us. And so I love thinking about that, having that thought. Like, all the clients I need or want right now are already around me, and all I need to do is to just serve them and offer them value and serve them really well. And when you do that, when you have that line of thinking, that mindset that I'm going to serve those that are already here, that are already around me at the highest level, then your network, your sphere, will grow automatically, organically. And if you're faithful to serve those that are already here, that are already around you, the circle will naturally grow. So what I want you to do is just think about where are all the places that you are currently present that you can increase your value. Right. I know for me, I love in person networking. And so I can really get into the, the rut, I could say, of like going to all kinds of different networking events, right, all over the place and meeting a ton of people and not really creating relationships. But that's not where my value lies. My value lies in being present where I am and creating relationships and value where I am. And when I do that, then my revenue grows. And so I want to just challenge you to really think about how you can be present and provide value and create deeper relationships in the circles that you're already in because clients are already all around you. Okay? So think about what do I already have, what do I already enjoy, what do I already know that I can create a deeper connection to my current orbit, my current network and go ahead and try that. And that's a great way to become more visible. And then you could ask yourself what would be one fun thing I would like to try? And don't go try 10 different fun things because if you spread yourself too thin, that's not going to serve you either. Believe me, I've been there. Ok, so that's the closed circle and then we have our wide circle. So as your circle grows and you know in the, in the closed circle, people work with you because they have that personal connection to you, right? They come to you because they know you. As your circle grows, people will begin to come to you and to know you through referrals or through your reputation in the industry and the community, whatever. They will come to know you through free value or even paid advertising that they come in contact with. So they will not need to have a personal connection or personally know you or be connected to you to know that they want to work with you. So think about how you will build relationships there in that way and how will you will make sales that way. So in the wide circle, people will be attracted to you and want to work with you and want what you have to offer without ever being connected to you personally. And that's really the bottom line with this wider circle. And so this is great when it happens, right? And, but the way it happens is if you're faithful in your close circle, right? And what I mean by that is you're not only serving and giving value in your closed circle, but you're also listening and learning how to hone in on your message, on your service offerings, how to communicate more effectively about what you do and how you serve and the results that you offer your clients. And as you do that, you incorporate that into your communications, into your freebies and free value and things that you're putting out into the world. And so those messages will resonate with people and will attract them to you and they will have never met you. Right? And you probably can think of thought leaders and people that you follow that you have never even met them, but you've connected with their content and even have bought things from them having never met them. And that's what I mean when I say the wide circle and pardon the dog barking. Our kids just are coming home from school. So I'm going to wrap it up soon. Strategies at that level will, that's when you can begin thinking about building funnels where you're leading people on a journey with you through email and through other ways of marketing to them without them having personal connection to you because there's so many of them coming in, right? The momentum, the, the compounding effect is taking place. And, and so you're getting more and more people that want to connect with you and want to work with you. And so this is also the wider circle is when you're also be considering paid advertising. This is when you want to be paying Google and Facebook to be introducing you to more people. And then you will also be scaling your service offerings, right, where you can be serving more people and have a more one to many type service offering. And there's lots of different ways to do that. We're not talking about that in this episode. But in terms of gaining visibility, that's what you would be thinking about is using some of these other strategies to grow your visibility among a wider circle of people. That's a closed circle and the wide circle. That's what I really want to share with you about growing your visibility and, and things to think about in this stage when you want to become more visible to grow your sales, I want you to also think about just focusing on a few things like keeping your focus very constrained because where your focus goes, your money grows. So if you're trying to be all things to all people everywhere, it's going to be very difficult. So like I said before, you know, pick a few different ways that you want to be more visible, ways that you are already doing that you already enjoy, that you already know how, that you just want to go deeper to provide more value in those spaces and maybe try one new thing at a time, right. Whether it's TikTok or, I don't know, whatever sounds fun. And remember that marketing is about the numbers. So if you want more clients, you need to be connecting with more people and booking more sales conversations. And if you want more sales also, and you want to be closing at a higher rate, you want to make sure you have a compelling offer. And I'm going to be talking about that and teaching you more about that in an upcoming episode and what makes a compelling offer and how to create a compelling offer. So we'll be talking about that in the future. But for the, for in terms of growing your visibility, if you want more sales coming in, just begin to make yourself more visible. It's as simple as that. And make sure that you are meeting more people, letting them know what you do, how you serve, and making offers to help them when they need the kind of help that you can provide. Right. And so I hope this was helpful to you. I hope you have a fabulous rest of your day. And of course I am always available to speak with you about this one on one if you would like. My eyes on your marketing plan and on your marketing and sales on your business. I would love to help you. And it is my absolute dream and vision to help every woman that wants to to create the money and the confidence that she needs to be herself, do the work she loves with those that you love. Right. One business at a time. So let's go ladies. Hope you have a great day. I'll talk to you next time. If you like this podcast then you have got to sign up for my free on demand video training. Grow your sales doing what you love. Where I teach you in depth my simple process that you can implement right away to harness your mindset and your skills to grow your sales to whatever level you want. So go grab that now. The link is in the show notes and I'll see you next time.